From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Being a kid in the 1950s who grew up in a house attached to the Pope County jail, in Glenwood, I had a different perspective on life than some of my friends. Sheriff Henry DeKok was my dad, and the jailed prisoners often became friends of our family. Mom and Dad taught my sister Barbie and me to look at life with more tolerance for others not as fortunate. Who else can say that they spent Christmas Eve sitting with prisoners from Dad’s jail around the Christmas tree in our living room? To top it off,  Dad read the Christmas story from the Bible’s book of John, and the guys listened.

I’ll bet few, if any, other folks got Christmas cards years later from former prisoners who enjoyed Mom’s homemade meals, cakes and cookies. And nobody I know learned to dance around the kitchen table with handsome prisoner Paul, an Arthur Murray dancer who danced his way from wife to wife and probably even another wife. He was a charmer. Unfortunately, he forgot to divorce his earlier wives before moving on to another. A talented guy, Paul decorated our jail kitchen when he spent a few months in Dad’s jail. He stenciled pink and green flowers on the soffits above our maple cabinets.

Dad’s jail was great entertainment for my friends. We played cops and robbers in the upstairs women’s jail when it was empty of prisoners. We watched Blackie do his exercises on the thin mattresses he’d flip on the jail floor. He could do flips, headstands, cartwheels and dazzle us kids looking through bars on the jail windows with his acrobatic feats. Dad and Mom used Blackie as an example to teach the importance of an education. Blackie had a university education, but he wasted it with drink.

Stories of my dad, Sheriff Henry DeKok, reminded my neighbor Teresa of her uncle and godfather Virgil Crowl, sheriff of Grant County, S.D., in the seventies and eighties. Sheriff Crowl made the national news when Lawrence Rout, a “Wall Street Journal” reporter, spent two days in Milbank, S.D., gathering information for the front page feature article published in August 1981. The national newspaper and reporter Rout knew folks would be interested in a respected “old school” lawman who used common sense in his dealings with their communities. 

Crowl said, “We’ve had everything since I’ve been here. You name it and we’ve had it.” He investigated a murder, a kidnapping and arson case in addition to his regular duties. Virgil had a big hat; he had a big presence. Virgil was a very kind man you could always trust to do the right thing. 

As sheriffs, both Dad and Virgil made ample use of “common sense” rather than always going “by the book of laws.” Once in awhile, their actions caused some folks to protest how they acted, but usually folks respected how the men handled things. 

You might recall a similar character in TV’s Sheriff Andy Griffith program “Mayberry RFD.” These sheriffs dealt mostly with drunks, burglaries, break ins, serving summons and collecting fines. Rarely did either sheriff DeKok of Crowl fire a gun. Sheriff DeKok shot out the tires of a bank robber’s speeding car once or twice. These men were not the shoot ’em up round-up-the-posse types of the TV Westerns. Folks in the rural counties they lived in and patrolled came to them to ask the sheriff to talk to their children about drinking and getting into trouble. Folks in their communities might discuss personal problems or just like to talk with them over coffee. They were highly respected men who make folks in their communities feel safe. 

Both sheriffs had a reputation that they “don’t take guff from anyone.” Crowl handled a drunk underage kid who mouthed off to him by grabbing him and lifting him right out of the booth. DeKok once had had it with a reporter who was interfering with an investigation: Sheriff DeKok grabbed the guy and tossed him from the scene. Though he was reprimanded for his forceful actions and docked in pay, townspeople responded and reinstated his pay. 

Both men got fed up with all the rules and regulations about the law rather than using common sense to enforce laws. In reporter Rout’s article in the “Journal” he quoted Virgil, “Police brutality—that’s all you hear about. I never beat up anybody in this job during all these years. If you look at them cross-eyed you can get sued. You can’t hardly talk to criminals now. You could (back) then. You’ve got to have false arrest insurance, too, in this job now-a-days. Everybody is so sue happy, and the lawman is the number one person on the list.”

Big city problems have forced their way into rural communities. Today sheriffs are faced with more mental health issues, drugs, sex trafficking and opioid problems. I doubt there are sheriffs with jails today that allow prisoners to celebrate Christmas with the sheriff’s family like in the fifties and sixties.

I remember hearing Dad and other sheriffs complaining that they were handcuffed by laws that protect the rights of criminals, not allowing lawmen to do their work. People today know their sheriffs not so much as a friend who keeps them safe but see them only when he’s making an arrest. 

Old school lawmen would say “You didn’t have to go by any old manual; you just used your head and did what came naturally.” Sheriff Virgil Crowl and Sheriff Henry DeKok took care of business sometimes with their fists and stern voices. At times they were reprimanded, but they didn’t take guff from anyone. Both Dad and Sheriff Crowl expressed their displeasure with the laws protecting the criminals. “The criminal has all the rights. The people have few rights.”

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.